of technique. The composition must have had much greater unity before
the barbarous shaving off, when the picture went to Rome, of the
circular top which it had in common with the _Assunta_, the Ancona, and
the Pesaro altar-pieces. Technically superior to the second of these
great works, it is marked by no such unity of dramatic action and
sentiment, by no such passionate identification of the artist with his
subject. It is only in passing from one of its beauties to another that
its artistic worth can be fully appreciated. Then we admire the rapt
expression, not less than the wonderfully painted vestments of the _St.
Nicholas_,[46] the mansuetude of the _St. Francis_, the Venetian
loveliness of the _St. Catherine_, the palpitating life of the _St.
Sebastian_. The latter is not much more than a handsome, over-plump
young gondolier stripped and painted as he was--contemplating, if
anything, himself. The figure is just as Vasari describes it, _ritratto
dal' vivo e senza artificio niuno_. The royal saint of Alexandria is a
sister in refined elegance of beauty and costume, as in cunning
elaboration of coiffure, to the _St. Catherine_ of the _Madonna del
Coniglio_, and the not dissimilar figure in our own _Holy Family with
St. Catherine_ at the National Gallery.

The fresco showing St. Christopher wading through the Lagunes with the
infant Christ on his shoulder, painted at the foot of a staircase in the
Palazzo Ducale leading from the Doge's private apartments to the Senate
Hall, belongs either to this year, 1523, or to 1524. It is, so far as we
know, Titian's first performance as a _frescante_ since the completion,
twelve years previously, of the series at the Scuola del Santo of Padua.
As it at present appears, it is broad and solid in execution, rich and
brilliant in colour for a fresco, very fairly preserved--deserving, in
fact, of a much better reputation as regards technique than Crowe and
Cavalcaselle have made for it. The movement is broad and true, the